10 January 31 • 2019
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the big BDS bang

Democrats are itching for anti-
BDS bills on which to vote. The
fact is that much of the anti-BDS
legislation puts Democrats in an
uncomfortable position, where
they are forced into a bad choice of
either being on the side of absolute
support for Israel or absolute sup-
port for free speech, but not both.
While none of the senators support
BDS, many of them would rather
see the issue go away. That is not
to say that the bulk of Democratic
senators will ultimately vote down
anti-BDS legislation on the merits,
but like any wedge issue that splits
elected officials from vocal parts of
their base, it is not a great place for
them to be politically.
The Republicans know this, and
they are in turn playing a deeply
cynical political game with the
BDS issue. By raising the BDS
issue in the very first piece of leg-
islation coming from a new Senate
but doing so while Congress was
unable to pass a spending bill that
President Donald Trump would
sign, the Republican majority cre-
ated a campaign issue that is good
for them but terrible for Israel’
s
status as a bipartisan cause. It is
glaringly obvious that Democrats
are not going to allow legislation
to proceed to debate that does not
address the shutdown, but now
Republicans are going to use Jan.
8’
s cloture vote — in which only
four Democrats voted to advance
the bill — as alleged evidence that
Democrats support BDS, including
those like Schumer and Cardin
whose pro-Israel bonafides are
unimpeachable.
But Republicans did something
even sneakier with the anti-BDS
legislation than conflating objec-
tions on procedure with support
for BDS. Rather than include the
anti-BDS bill sponsored by Cardin
and GOP Sen. Rob Portman target-
ing boycotts led by foreign govern-
ments and international organiza-
tion that was the result of months
of negotiations and revisions in
response to free speech objections
from the ACLU and other groups,
they used an anti-BDS bill that
would affirm the right of state and
local government to pass anti-
BDS legislation that has in some

states already been struck down by
courts as unconstitutional.
In other words, rather than ask
Senate Democrats to pass a bill
that was the result of painstaking
efforts to mitigate free speech
concerns, they asked them to pass
a bill that protects state and local
legislation to which Democrats
have legitimate free speech objec-
tions and that has already been
successfully challenged. The fact
that Democrats, including Cardin,
sponsored a version of this bill
before it was successfully chal-
lenged in courts makes it even
better for Republicans politically,
since they can truthfully — but
nonetheless misleadingly — claim
that the bill is bipartisan, ignoring
the fact that there is a heaping pile
of changed circumstances. None
of these facts or details will make
it through to 99.99 percent of the
public, who will simply hear that
Democrats do not want to combat
BDS and that only Republicans
can be trusted to safeguard Israel
from this wishing to erode its legit-
imacy and destroy it as a Jewish
state. This is not good for Israel,
and this is not good for pro-Israel
Democrats, but it is a master class
in how to use procedural chicanery
and wild unsupported accusations
to turn support for Israel into a
cudgel with which to beat your
political enemies.
Get used to much more of this
as the 2020 presidential cam-
paign season heats up. Democrats
do indeed have a problem with
some of their base on Israel,
and Republicans are going to do
all they can to make them take
uncomfortable vote after uncom-
fortable vote, reaping whatever
political wins they can rather than
try and sustain bipartisan support
for Israel as a policy goal. Praise
the rock-solid support for Israel in
the Republican Party all you want
but ask yourself how pro-Israel
it truly is to accelerate a process
through which Israel becomes a
partisan issue rather than trying to
stem the tide. ■


Dr. Michael J. Koplow is Israel Policy Forum’
s
Policy Director, based in Washington, D.C.

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